Most racing fans will want to erase the 2012 St Leger and its winner from their memories but I'm not sure the 2013 edition is one to help to that. It's far from a vintage renewal and lacks a decent 'story' at this stage.

He has a tremendous recent record in racing's oldest Classic and is looking to win it for the third time in four years and a fifth occasion in total. Gosden is the master at training a slow-developing three-year-old.

This year Excess Knowledge is his representative and I can't erase from my memory being at Glorious Goodwood in July. After the luckless second in the Gordon Stakes, you'd have expected connections to have been cursing their misfortune. Not a bit of it.

He looks like a relentless galloper and his trainer this week described Doncaster as the best galloping track in Europe.

Last week the quick surface wasn't ideal for the Sky Sports News-owned two-year-old On Demand, who nevertheless ran a fine debut at Salisbury. She led until just before the furlong pole and had Alex Hammond and I very excited for a while.

Andrew Balding's newcomers always come on a tonne from their debut and On Demand is a horse to keep a close eye on.

Now it's time to re-focus on the Premier League and with the transfer window closed, it feels like the season now kicks on for real. We have a fascinating weekend ahead with a load of new faces at clubs and numerous teams with questions to answer.

Both these teams got their seasons off to flying starts but have stuttered since.

The forward can hold the ball up as we saw in the first half in Ukraine but also has an assured touch and can pick a pass, as we saw twice in the build-up to two of the goals at Wembley last week.

Matt Le Tissier, who will be our guest on Sunday, has described Lambert as the best passer of a ball at the club since he wore the number seven shirt himself.

Lambert is flying but there's no guarantee he will start against West Ham. After the busy week the striker has had I can easily see Mauricio Pochettino going with Dani Osvaldo up front.

The experiment of playing Lambert and Osvaldo in a 4-4-2 system at Norwich did not work and the chances are he'll revert back to 4-3-3 with Jay Rodriguez and Adam Lallana either side of the main striker.

Pochettino has tricky decisions all over the field. Rodriguez and Jack Cork were arguably Saints' two best players at the back end of last season yet both are struggling to get a game. What is good to see is the core of young English players at the club and there's every chance two English teenagers will start at full-back - Calum Chambers and Luke Shaw - and on the opening day they were the youngest to do so since the Neville brothers in 1995.

From St Mary's, Gary Neville and I will head to London to link up with Jamie Carragher as Monday Night Football returns this week.

There's bound to be lots of interesting things to look back on from the Premier League weekend with so many new signings in action, notably Mesut Ozil's potential Arsenal debut at Sunderland.

We also have a really good live game as Swansea take on the League's only team with a 100 per cent record, Liverpool.

A theme has developed with Liverpool winning all their games 1-0 and Daniel Sturridge becoming the first player in Premier League history to score winning goals in the opening three games of a season.

In amongst the football on Saturday do try and see some of Vuelta a Espana's penultimate stage. First, because the race is so close and set to go down to the wire. Second, because it is as tough a stage as there is in cycling as the riders tackle cycling's Olympus, L'Angliru.

It's a leg breaker of a climb that you and I would only be able to walk up and it's the finish where infamously in 2002 David Millar protested about its severity by stopping a metre before the line and handed in his race number.

Race leader Vincenzo Nibali showed fallibility in the final Pyrenean stage on Tuesday and any chinks in his armour will be brutally exposed on L'Angliru.

Rigoberto Uran is bound to feature heavily as he bids to make amends for the narrow defeat on Tuesday and finish Team Sky's race on a high.

His biggest danger is Joaquim Rodriguez, who yet again is coming good in the third week of a Grand Tour and I'll be backing him to win Saturday's stage on Spain's equivalent of Alpe d'Huez and Mont Ventoux.

Readers' Comments

I

t's wrong to be making a joke out of Bender's name at the expense of gay people. It's the kind of childish, uncivilised thing that Football365 would deride and ridicule if it was another media outlet saying. Why is there a need for jokes like this? Does it make your writers feel like men? F365 might suggest that I 'lighten up', but it is genuinely traumatic for people who have been oppressed all their lives to be the butt of jokes, and to be told...

ou can't blame De Gea for wanting to leave, he has enough to do in front of goal as it is as well as taking on the role of Man Utd's version of Derek Acorah in trying to contact and organise a defence that isn't there.